with buffalo hides, like unto
which there are some to be seen at this present in Scotland (as I
hear), although there be a little (I wot not well what) difference
between them. Of the same also Solinus speaketh, so far as I remember:
nevertheless it may be gathered from his words how the upper parts of
them above the water only were framed of the said wickers, and that
the Britons did use to fast all the whiles they went to the sea in
them; but whether it were done for policy or superstition, as yet I do
not read.

In the beginning of the Saxons' regiment we had some ships also; but
as their number and mould was little, and nothing to the purpose, so
Egbert was the first prince that ever thoroughly began to know this
necessity of a navy and use the service thereof in the defence of his
country. After him also other princes, as Alfred, Edgar, Ethelred,
etc., endeavoured more and more to store themselves at the full with
ships of all quantities, but chiefly Edgar, for he provided a navy of
1600 _alias_ 3600 sail, which he divided into four parts, and sent
them to abide upon four sundry coasts of the land, to keep the same
from pirates. Next unto him (and worthy to be remembered) is Ethelred,
who made a law that every man that hold 310 hidelands should find a
ship furnished to serve him in the wars. Howbeit, as I said before,
when all their navy was at the greatest, it was not comparable for
force and sure building to that which afterward the Normans provided,
neither that of the Normans anything like to the same that is to be
seen now in these our days. For the journeys also of our ships, you
shall understand that a well-builded vessel will run or sail commonly
three hundred leagues or nine hundred miles in a week, or peradventure
some will go 2200 leagues in six weeks and a half. And surely, if
their lading be ready against they come thither, there be of them that
will be here, at the West Indies, and home again in twelve or thirteen
weeks from Colchester, although the said Indies be eight hundred
leagues from the cape or point of Cornwall, as I have been informed.
This also I understand by report of some travellers, that, if any of
our vessels happen to make a voyage to Hispaniola or New Spain (called
in time past Quinquegia and Haiti), which lieth between the north
tropic and the Equator, after they have once touched at the Canaries
(which are eight days' sailing or two hundred and fifty leagues from
St. Lucas de Bara